The proliferation of mobile apps makes it difficult for upstarts to gain traction. Statistics show that competition is fierce in the app market. As of August 2019, the two most popular app stores in the world—Google Play Market with nearly 3 million apps and Apple’s App Store with about 2 million apps—are both experiencing rapid growth. Therefore, in order to stand out, mobile apps should not only provide high-quality performance, but also establish strong brands. Branding a mobile app is the topic of today’s discussion.
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Branding for Mobile Apps: What Is It?
We will begin with the usual set of terms. Branding is a series of marketing and psychological procedures and strategies used to establish a name, identity, and reputation for a product, service, person, etc., as we defined it in one of our earlier articles.
A brand, on the other hand, is the public’s perception of a product or service that has been built around a set of characteristics meant to make it stand out in the marketplace.
Thus, the visual image, communication, and reputation of a mobile app are what make up its branding.
Important Points to Evaluate
As a first step in developing your app’s brand, you should consider the following questions:
- Tell me who will download your app and why they will use it.
- In your app, what makes it stand out? How is it different from similar products?
- How does your app appear? The logo, colors, illustrations, mascots, and other visual symbols convey a message. What is that message?
- In what ways does your app make its users feel?
- Can you describe the app’s voice and tone? How would you describe the tone? Does it mimic human conversation in any way—as a friend, an expert, a mentor, etc.?
- In what ways will people learn about your app? In what ways can the app and user exchange information?
Your responses to these questions will help shape the overarching strategy that affects every facet of the app’s development, marketing, and design. The logic and transitions of the user experience, as well as the colors, typography, graphics, animation, copy, and style, will be affected by branding. A user’s app shortcuts will be defined based on the channels and methods of promotion. Thus, before beginning design and development, you must answer these questions to ensure effective mobile branding. Here, the focus is squarely on the brand image, which will be both consistent and integral to the overall strategy.
For instance, consider the Cuteen app: its name, unique visuals, and interaction patterns were all decided upon by the brand’s target audience—adolescent girls.
Mobile App Marketing Approaches
Step by step, construct a brand image after you’ve identified the app’s intended users, the problems it addresses, and the message it conveys. While we’re at it, let’s double-check a few key features and strategies. Without a doubt, in order to discover unique solutions, they should all be grounded in user research and market exploration.
Brand Identity and Mobile App Icon
A logo, a visual representation of the brand, is one of the most fundamental aspects of branding. Logos come in various forms:
- Representing the name, features, or functionality of an app, a symbol is an image with strong symbolic potential.
- Creative typography incorporating the entire brand name is known as a logotype or wordmark.
- A lettermark is an artistic representation of the initial letter of a brand name.
- A combination mark is one that makes use of both symbol/lettermark and wordmark techniques at the same time.
- The emblem incorporates the brand’s name into the symbolic image by means of an inscription of a wordmark or lettermark.
Relevant Terms
Coming up with a set of branding-related keywords is another great approach to ensure consistency. Depending on what they do, you can classify them into different categories.
So that everyone involved in making the app knows what it should look like and what message it should convey, descriptive keywords will help identify and describe your brand. These keywords outline the essential characteristics that users should notice right away from the appearance and interactions. If you want to describe the app as “business, luxury, exclusive” or “helpful, simple, minimalist,” among other possible terms, you can do so in this set.
The set of terms that people will use to locate your app is known as brand keywords. It includes not just the initial name but also various forms of its extension and typos. Take our Upper app as an example. It will be listed alongside names like Upper, Upper App, Upper to-do app, Upper mobile app, Uper, UPPER, and plenty more. If you are planning any promotional campaigns or have any SEO issues, this list will be helpful.
Combinations of a brand name and qualifying words or phrases are called Brand-Plus keywords. For instance, our Toonie Alarm app features a mascot, a tutorial, a special offer, Toonie for iOS, Toonie stickers for iMessage, a landing page, and additional features such as these. They make up yet another set that is useful for search engine optimization and content development.
Font, Size, and Style
Before diving into the design and development process, it would be wise to reach a consensus on these points. Problematically, naming in the context of intense competition is yet another major obstacle, and it significantly affects the subsequent solutions pertaining to design, marketing, and user communication. In addition to picking a name that sounds good and conveys the brand’s value, you should think carefully about:
whether this name is available on the AppStore and PlayMarket (if it isn’t, you’ll need to look for variations that could be associated with your brand and brand-plus keywords, or you can start over with a different name).
an address for the app’s website or landing page (in the event that the app stands on its own, rather than being a part of an existing brand’s infrastructure)
the online visibility of the app name (it could be difficult to compete with other non-app brands that are already using this name).
Product Demo Movie
Now more than ever, in the age of Snapchat and YouTube, video content is king. Branding for the app’s mobile version is also include. An animated product or explainer video highlights the app’s features and benefits, walks the user through the app’s unique interaction steps, and demonstrates the app’s ability to solve problems. An engaging and original video is a tried-and-true way to inform viewers rapidly and vividly while also capturing their attention. Video often tells a story while simultaneously engaging the audience’s auditory, visual, and kinesthetic senses. An example of our work is this explainer video for the OffCents app.
Onboarding and Personalization
The goal of user onboarding is to put users at ease and provide them with a brief introduction to the product through a series of techniques and interactions. Instructions, tooltips, and textual prompts can all have subtle branding in the copy and graphics. Every one of these details contributes to a satisfying user experience, which in turn fosters brand loyalty among satisfied customers.
The term “personalization” refers to the capacity of users to tailor certain features and interactions to their specific requirements. As an example, we recently published a case study on Recipe App, a tool that lets users create a personalized recipe list by setting goals and removing ingredients they don’t like.
The use of video games
The term “gamification” refers to the process of introducing game elements into non-game contexts, most notably mobile apps. Badges, leaderboards, challenges, and bonuses are all great ways to get people talking and engaged. They help raise awareness of the brand and make the app’s interface easily recognizable by using graphics in the brand’s stylistics. Furthermore, users are incentivize to share their achievements with friends, whether online or offline, through virtual or real rewards. This way, they become an additional channel for app promotion and witness positive user experience.
Assist and Backing
You can’t make a decent coat out of poor fabric. Making a memorable first impression is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to authentic branding. It pertains to every possible experience that users may have. Particularly with complicated mobile products like social networks or e-commerce, you should think about how they will get the help they need at any point in the interaction.
Home Pages
When developing the identity and online visibility of a mobile app, a landing page is an essential tool. In cases where the app is standalone and not linked to a website, it becomes very important. As a rule, it’s a web page that has one primary purpose and provides a simple means of achieving that purpose.
The purpose of a mobile app’s landing page is to encourage app installation by providing a brief summary of the app’s features and benefits. Also, using features like geotargeting, gender targeting, psychographic targeting, demographic targeting, and behavioral targeting, you can make different landing pages for different parts of the target audience within the same app.
As an alternative to showing users static images of the app in the AppStore, it is a great way to introduce them to the app in a nutshell. A dating mobile service landing page like this one would look like this.
Internet-Based Communities
In addition to search engines, social media platforms can bolster a mobile app’s branding strategy. You can’t just look at app reviews, promotional campaigns, and public pages and assume that people will just install the app without reading anything else. Never underestimate the power of social media as a means to increase exposure for your brand.
